increased intercourse, might previously have done more to assimilate his language, habits, and modes of living and of thinking to those of men in that part of the country to which he is now a stranger, and in which he is a foreigner. “There would thus have been opened up to him the same means of providing for his subsistence that were found by those of his class, who, during the last century, have ceased to cultivate land occupied by themselves. But the calamity that suddenly disabled him from producing his food by his own labour on his croft, has found him generally unprepared to provide by either means for his maintenance. All the various attempts that have yet been made in so many parishes to extricate the working classes from the difficulties against which they are unsuccessfully contending, have not only failed to accomplish that object, but have failed even to arrest the deterioration in their circumstances and condition that has been in progress for the last four years. In every parish, with one or two exceptions, men of all classes and denominations concur unanimously in declaring it to be impossible, by any application of the existing resources, or by any remunerative application of extraneous resources, to provide for the permanent subsistence of the whole of the present inhabitants; and state their conviction that the population cannot be made self-sustaining, unless a portion removes from the parish.... The working classes in many parishes are convinced that the emigration of a part of their number affords the only prospect of escape from a position otherwise hopeless; and in many cases individuals have earnestly prayed for aid to emigrate. Petitions numerously signed by persons desirous to go to the North American colonies, and praying for assistance to enable them to do so, have been transmitted for presentation to Parliament. In some of the parishes where no desire for emigration had been publicly expressed, or was supposed to exist, that desire began to be announced as soon as the expectation of extraneous aid was abandoned. It has rarely happened that so many persons, between whom there was or could have been no previous concert or intercourse, and whose opinions on many important subjects are so much at variance, have concurred in considering any one measure indispensable to the welfare of the community; and there does not appear to be any good reason for supposing that this almost unanimous opinion is not well founded.”[88]